


this cruel land is my mind

by Pixx



Category: Sword Art Online (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Angst, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Depression, Depression Recovery, Emotional Hurt, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Pain, Suicide Attempt, and are still very close friend, do not read this if it will trigger you, im gonna assume they had an amiciable mutual breakup, no references to kirto/asuna, the author projects wildly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-14 04:21:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28789377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pixx/pseuds/Pixx
Summary: Kirito is lost and depressed after the events of alicization. this fic is detailed-ish in its depictions of depression and attempted suicide, please do not read if that is going to trigger you.
Relationships: Eugeo/Kirigaya Kazuto | Kirito
Comments: 2
Kudos: 27





	this cruel land is my mind

**Author's Note:**

> hey, this is my first fic for SAO so first off thanks for clicking. if you're feeling depressed or suicidal, help numbers for the will be in the end notes. and I'm saying again, please don't read this if you know it's going to be a trigger for you. you all deserve to be happy so don't harm yourself <3

_ It should have been me _ . 

Diavel, pushing away the healing potion. Telling me to kill the boss and save the others. I should have made you take it anyway, there was no need for you to die. I’m so sorry. 

_ It should have been me. _

Ducker, Tetsuo, Sasamaru. Sachi. Killed walking into a trap. I could have saved them. It was my fault. I’m sorry. 

_ It should have been me. _

Keita. I’m so sorry. It’s all my fault, please don’t jump, please. If I killed you all…

_ It should have been me. _

Kobatz, your men. So desperate to save your image that you marched chin up to your deaths. I could have saved you. If I’d been faster, I could have stopped it. It’s my fault, I’m sorry. 

_ It should have been me. _

Godfree. Kuradeel killed you because of me. Because I was stupid enough to think he wouldn’t try anything. Because I was stupid enough to not realise who he was. Kuradeel was the one who killed you, but it was my fault. 

_ It should have been me.  _

Kuradeel. I killed you. You deserved it, but I should have done it sooner. Your victims are my responsibility, especially Godfree. You were so close to Asuna too. I wonder if she was going to be your target. 

I could never have lived with myself if she was.

_ It should have been me. _

Everyone who died fighting the Skull Reaper. I wasn’t strong enough to save you all, I should have been… I don’t know. Could I have saved you? I’m sorry, you were all so close to the end. 

_ It should have been me.  _

Everyone who died to Death Gun. I wish I could have gotten him before any of you were hurt. 

_ It should have been me. _

Yuuki. You were a good friend. I still miss you every day. 

_ It should have been me. _

Raios. I put you with Kuradeel. I don’t regret your death, but you were terrified and in pain. Nobody deserves that, no matter what they’ve done. 

_ Except you. _

Cardinal. You shouldn’t have given your life to save us, I didn’t deserve it. And  _ he _ died anyway. 

_ Should have been you.  _

Eugeo. 

Eugeo. Eugeo. You were my everything in the Underworld. I still see your face every time I close my eyes. I’m scared to fall asleep because all I dream about is you. It’s not always your death, though that does feature more than any other. Sometimes I see us back in Rulid, cutting that tree like we did every day, laughing together. It always goes quiet though, and when I look back at you, you’re gone and I’m alone again. And I remember that I will always be alone, and that I’m never going to see you again and my heart  _ aches _ so badly that I would do anything to make it stop. 

_ It should have been you instead of Eugeo. He had his whole life left to look forward to, but what are  _ you _? A sad half-broken monster. The only thing you can look forward to is the death and devastation that follows you wherever you go. You’re an omen of death, Kirito. _

Stop. Stop. Deep breath. Okay. Two things I can see. Okay, there’s a pillow, I’m holding it. The window, with the stars twinkling outside. Two things I can hear. The whirring of the computer fans. Suguha, her footsteps outside the door. Gotta keep quiet, can’t let her know what’s happening. 

_ Can’t let her know her big brother is breaking, splitting apart at the seams.  _

Two things I can feel. The pillow I’m holding, I bury my face into it again as I feel a sob rip through my chest. My bed, I’m sitting on it. My throat hurts from crying, but I can’t stop. The only thing I can do is be as quiet as possible. Mom and Suguha don’t need to hear me, they have enough on their plate already without worrying about me. 

_ You think they  _ worry _ about you? They don’t  _ care _ , they never have and they never will _ . 

A sob catches in my throat and I choke on it, unable to catch a breath. It’s not true, I know it’s not true. I try to reassure myself, but I can feel myself spiralling, intrusive thoughts coming faster than I can keep up with them. I know when I feel like this I’m supposed to tell someone, that’s what the doctor said. And I can still hear Mom and Suguha outside. All I have to do is walk out that door. 

I can’t move. Okay, we’ll break it down into steps. Put down the pillow, stand up, walk over to the door, open it. 

Put down the pillow. Nope.

Put down the pillow. Still can’t move. 

_ Put down the pillow! _ I’m frozen, overwhelmed. I can’t move. I can’t remember  _ how _ to move. 

I can’t hear them outside anymore. They must have gone to bed. 

I stop trying to get up, and let myself fall onto my side. This is so pathetic. I should be better than this, shouldn’t I?

_ Look at you. Look at your sad, lonely existence. What’s the point? _

What’s the point indeed. I bury my face into the pillow, until I can’t breathe and hold it there until my chest hurts, lungs screaming for oxygen and I give in to the demand. I take a deep breath and shudder with another sob. 

I feel lightheaded, like nothing seems real. It feels like I’m a puppet as I get up off the bed. I don’t feel like I’m moving under my own power, but I must be. I stumble with heavy legs over to my desk, opening the top drawer. Two orange pill bottles roll around, bouncing off each other. 

_ Alprazolam. Take one as needed for anxiety. _

I shake one pill out onto my hand and look at it. The little white pill sits there innocently. I throw it into my mouth and wash it down with stale water in a bottle on my desk. But I don’t let go of the orange bottle. I start to feel floatier, like a balloon tethered to the ground. Cut my strings and I might just float away. 

I stand there for a long time, and when I move back to my bed, I don’t notice that the pill bottle is a lot lighter than it was a couple minutes ago. 

“Kazuto?  _ Oh my god, Kazuto! Mom!”  _

It's loud, and bright. I try to turn my head away but I can’t really move. I don’t feel attached to my body. I’m brought back when hands begin to touch me, moving and lifting me. They feel like fire and I try and tell them to stop but all that comes out is garbled nonsense and weak protests. I’m not in control of my body. I can feel tears leaking out of the corners of my eyes. It takes a massive amount of effort to turn my head and I see a familiar blurry outline. 

“Eugeo,” I think I say, although it doesn’t seem to come out right, as I reach for him, “Eugeo!” I blink and Eugeo sharpens into a blonde man in a blue uniform. I vaguely recognise it as a paramedic uniform as the man who is very much  _ not _ Eugeo straps me down into a stretcher. I let my hand fall by my side, and let my body float away from me once more as I close my eyes and wonder if I’m going to see him soon. 

-SAO-

Asuna visits me in the hospital. When she’s around everything feels warmer. When she’s around I almost can’t feel the chill of death that follows me wherever I go. The hospital is cold and sterile, white pillows on white bedsheets surrounded by white walls, everything not white being freezing stainless steel, but when Asuna walks into the room and smiles at me, the cold recedes, like a night sky being chased away for a moment by a flash of lightning. 

They say I tried to kill myself, that I overdosed on my medication. I don’t remember doing it, all I remember from that night is the awful pain in my chest, and the light and screaming, but that’s what Mom and Suguha said. I would have died, if Sugu hadn’t gone to the bathroom and noticed that my light was still on and gone to check on me. I’m torn between grateful and angry at her, and my emotions about it, and her, seem to flip flop by the day. Some days, mostly the days Asuna visits, I’m glad she saved my life. But sometimes a switch flips in my head and I’m furious that she found me. I didn’t mean to die, at least I don’t think so, but would it have been so bad? I could have been with Eugeo again. I wouldn’t have to live with the pain and the memories anymore. In a way, thinking of dying feels freeing. 

Asuna’s face looks sad, drawn. She looks tired. I wonder why that is, but I can’t summon the energy or motivation to even open my mouth to ask her. I stare at her, blankly, awareness fading in and out. Her mouth is moving, but I can’t concentrate on what she’s saying, I can only catch snippets of words. 

“...Kirito...” my name. That’s my name, it feels more like  _ me _ than the name I was born with. Now it’s weird to hear people call me Kazuto. I wonder when that happened. Was it in Sword Art Online, or was it when Eugeo said it? Hearing my own name reminds me of him. I wonder if it’ll ever stop reminding me of him. 

I wonder if I’ll ever want it to stop reminding me of him. 

“...discharge… home…” She’s talking to me about going home. I’m pretty sure they’re letting me go soon. As weak and unmotivated as I am, they don’t think I’m going to be a threat to myself. On this at least, I’m in agreement with them. Actively trying to kill myself sounds like it would take too much energy to even attempt. I could just let myself drift away, refuse to eat or drink anything, but Suguha and Mom would never let me get away with it, I’d just end up in the hospital again on a feeding tube or something. 

As much as I hate it, I’m pretty much stuck here. Eugeo is just going to have to wait for me. 

I hope he waits for me. 

I don’t even notice that Asuna has left until a nurse walks in to take my vitals. I don’t fight her. I don’t care about it, or anything anymore. 

I barely register the passing of time, only realising that time has passed when I’m helped out of the hospital doors into Mom’s car and we’re driving home. I rest my head against the window. The cool feeling of the glass is the nicest thing I’ve felt in a while. Suguha attempts to talk to me, but when I don’t reply to her she stops, and the car lapses into an uncomfortable silence that I avoid by letting myself drift away. 

-SAO-

Mandated therapy  _ sucks _ . It’s the only thing I can sum up the energy to feel something about, and all I feel is hate. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want the doctor asking me questions that make me think about myself. All I want to do is go home and lie in my bed and just  _ pretend I don’t exist _ until the time when I actually don’t. 

The doctor has green eyes. They remind me of his eyes, but they don’t turn blue in the light. Like a copy that’s not quite right. 

I can feel myself starting to feel again. The doctor says that feelings tend to come back in sections, and that I may only have one emotion right at the start. 

It’s  _ hate _ . 

I hate everything. I hate the doctor, with his pretentious office, and his eyes that are similar-but-not-quite like Eugeos. I hate Mom and Suguha for never leaving me alone, always trying to talk to me and ask me questions and make me eat and drink. I hate Asuna, for coming around and looking at me with those large hazel eyes and for hoping that something good will come again out of the half-broken shell of a person I’ve become. 

I  _ hate _ Eugeo. 

I hate him for leaving me, I hate him for talking to me in the first place. I hate him for making me get attached to him. I hate him for making me fall in love with him. I hate him for dying and I hate him for sacrificing himself so that I could live. I hate him because I really don’t hate him at all, because I miss him so badly that whenever I think of him my entire chest aches and I think that this, this pain is the one that will finally end it all. And it never is. 

  
So I seethe and hate, quietly to myself. Never letting anyone know how much I scream and rage inside. I keep my blank face on the outside, and wait for the others to come back. 

The next to come back is sadness, and I have no idea how I’m going to survive this one. Everything I see reminds me of him, and it’s so overwhelming that I just retreat into my bed and refuse to look at anything or interact with anything until it’s over. Mom and Suguha worry and fret, and never allow me to close my door. I guess I deserve it after what I did, but it’s frustrating nonetheless, and underneath the sadness I can feel the hate begin to churn and bubble up again. I push it down, I can’t deal with both at once. 

The other emotions come back, little drips at a time. I smile at a television show. I answer a question that Mom or Suguha or the doctor asks me. I log on to Alfheim Online. I sit at the top of a hill, looking over everything. There’s something below that looks like a little village. It reminds me of Rulid. I log out immediately and go to bed. 

I log in again and go back to that spot. The little village that reminds me of Rulid is still there, and instead of avoiding it I sit there for a long while, letting the memories and feelings crash over me in waves and sitting with them. I spend an entire afternoon in ALO sitting on a hill, crying about a village that is both there and not there. When it’s finally over I feel almost cleansed. Relieved. I stand up from my spot and walk back down the hill, keeping my eyes on that little village until it's hidden again behind the mountain and it almost feels like a secret that only I know about. 

I talk to my friends again. At first they don’t seem to remember how to speak to me, tip toeing on eggshells around me. At first I don’t say anything, but just watch them interact with each other. But then, I can’t remember clearly what compelled me to do it , I think it was Agil griping about gardening which I had no idea he did. But I told my friends about the little flower garden I grew at the Swordcraft Academy. The flowers that Eugeo and I grew. And it was like a crack in a dam had formed that was growing larger and larger and letting more and more water out with every passing day. 

I started to feel normal again. And when something reminded me of him, the voice in my head didn’t tell me it should have been me anymore. And when I saw something cool, or when I was flying through the skies in ALO, my first thought was always. 

_ Eugeo’s going to love this. I’ll have to tell him _ . 

But he’s going to have to wait. 

**Author's Note:**

> Lifeline Australia: 13 11 14  
> other countries: w/w/w.suicidestop.com/call_a_hotline


End file.
